"Where is it to come from ?"

"I am to write to a London dressmaker, whose name and address he has given me, and tell her to come down here. When she arrives I am to give her what orders I choose."

"A princely bridegroom!"

"But I shall be economical, Maggie, just to show him that I marry him for love, and not for what I can get."

I smiled and remained silent.

"At the same time I want to look well, although I am to be married in a bonnet. To-morrow, Maggie, he is going to take me to Lorton, to buy materials for making up into good wearing dresses. Oh! I shall be very busy. You must help me, darling. There are lots of things you can do for me. I shall want

She commenced an enumeration of her wants, which, enlarged by my suggestions, lasted some minutes.

"Has he named any place of residence ?" I inquired.

"Yes. He is going to give up his house here, and travel for six or eight months on the continent. During his absence an agent of his will see to the furnishing of a house for us at Newton."

"Where is that?"

"A few miles out of London, he tells me. Fancy, Maggie, my going to Switzerland and Italy! It will be the coming true of my brightest dreams. We shall go to the Swiss lakes, and to Venice, and home through France. I am dying to see Paris! Oh! Maggie, my happiness would be complete if you were only going to be with us, or if you were to be married yourself to some one you dearly loved."

"Never mind me, Kate. All that we have to do for the present is to think of you. One at a time."

"But you will come and see us, Maggie, often; and stay with us for days together?"

"All in good time. Wait till you're settled."

She became endearing. She pushed her chair near me and folded her arms around my neck.

"I cannot bear the thought of leaving you, dearest. We have been so much together. Do you remember when we first came to Ivy Lodge?-how we used to play together in the arbour where we three sat this afternoon ?-how George used to teach us to smoke, and how we both cried when he cut the tongue of his blackbird the wrong way, because he wanted it to talk? We were tiny things then, Maggie. How little we knew the life that was in store for us!"

I compressed my brows to keep back my tears.

"What a long time we seem to have lived, Maggie! I sometimes think that we must be older than we are. It seems such a long long while ago since we first came here."

There was a pause. Presently she said, in a low voice:

L

"When I am married I mean to ask my husband's permission to visit our parents' graves. Devonshire is not very far when you have money to reach it with. I should like to go with you, Maggie, and pray there. I wish I could say one little prayer there before I am married."

"Their spirits are near us, Kate, darling. We can pray to them here-anywhere."

"The new life I am about to enter," she went on, "will be so strange to me. Oh! Maggie, a girl misses her mother when she is going to change her life. I want advice, and the kisses which are like a blessing."

I pressed my lips close to hers, yearning to administer the benediction which I knew her young spirit craved for. But a sister's lips are not those of a mother.

TEMPLE BAR.

JANUARY 1872.

"Good-bye, Sweetheart!"

A TALE IN THREE PARTS.

BY RHODA BROUGHTON, AUTHOR OF "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," ETC.

IT

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.

is time to go to the ball; all are ready; all are in the hall save Lenore. The men have each two pairs of white kid gloves in their pocket; one has plain gold studs, the other diamond and black enamel ; but, oh, how poor, how small are man's highest adornments compared to woman's! At his best, in his dress of greatest ceremony, he is but a scrimping, black-forked biped, compared to the indefinite volume, the many-coloured majesty, of beflounced, belaced, beflowered woman.

"Did you tell her we were all waiting ?" asks Sylvia, in a tone of impatience.

"I did," replies Jemima, stepping leisurely downstairs with a large mat, which her train has carried down from the upper regions, attached to her tail.

"And what did she say?"

"She said, 'Hurry no man's cattle!' "

"Was she nearly ready?"

"I don't know."

"What was she doing?"

"She was advancing and retreating before her long glass, ascertaining whether her petticoats were all of a length.'

"

"There is plenty of time," says Scrope; "not ten yet. I remember once going to a ball in the country, and finding myself the first person there. It was an awful sensation!"

"Are you sure that I should not look better with a fichu?" says

VOL. XXXIV.

L

Sylvia, in an anxious aside, to her sister, getting out of earshot of the men, and craning her throat to get a view, over her shoulderblades, at the back of her own neck. "Am I too décolletée behind? You know that there is nothing in life I have such a horror of as being called a frisky matron!'"

"It does look rather juvenile, perhaps," replies Jemima, unkindly saying the exact reverse of what she knows is expected of her.

Sylvia's countenance falls a little.

66 6

'Juvenile! Oh, that was not what I meant in the least! I ⚫ asked Charlie Scrope what he thought" (smiling a little), "and he said, 'You look awfully jolly!' He said it quite loud. I am sure I don't know what Paul could have thought. I suppose one ought not to have asked him his opinion, poor boy, because he always thinks one looks nice, whatever one has on.'

"Does he?" "Jemima," (lowering her voice, and speaking with eager sincerity,) "promise to tell me everything that you hear anybody say of me to-night, and I will promise to tell you everything I hear anybody say of you."

Jemima does not answer; her eyes are fixed on the stairs, on which a vision has appeared, above whose head two lady's-maids are triumphantly holding flat candlesticks, to aid the bright gaslight which is already illumining her; a vision, like a summer night, dark, yet softly splendid. Lenore, all in black, with great silver lilies starring her hair, shining on her breast, garlanding her skirts. As she comes stepping daintily down, she does not look conscious-very handsome people seldom do; it is a prerogative reserved for faintly and doubtfully pretty ones. In her hand she carries a huge bouquet of white and purple flowers. All stare at her; but she seems to see only Paul. She goes straight up to him, her eyes shining like soft lamps, and her cheeks all rosy with happiness.

"Thank you so much," she says in a low voice. "I was surprisedand yet not surprised-when Nicholls came to my room and said, 'Here's a bouquet for you, ma'am.' I knew in a minute, of course. I did not even take the trouble to ask whom it was from; I knew, naturally."

As she talks, Paul's complexion varies and his countenance changes; but she goes on, without giving him time to speak.

"How did you come to know all my favourite flowers? was it intuition, or did I ever tell you? I forget. Violets, Roman narcissi, white hyacinths-all the scents that I am most wild about. There!" (holding up the bouquet to his face) "you may have one sniff, one little sniff at it-only a little one, mind!"

'Lenore," says Paul in a mortified voice, looking red and miserable, "it was not I. I know nothing about it. To tell you the truth, I never thought of such a thing!"

Had they been alone he would have added fond apologies; would have told her what was the truth-that had he thought they would have given her pleasure, he would have bought her a thousand bouquets, each much bigger than a haystack; would have sent to Kamschatka for them, did bigger fairer flowers grow there than here; but, as three people are by, his pride restrains him.

"Not you?" repeats Lenore, in a blank voice, as her arm and the now valueless posy drop to her side. "Who was it, then? Oh, of course," (following Scrope, who has turned to the fire to hide the scarlet tinge that has spread from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck) "it was you! I am right this time! Thanks so much for thinking of me."

She stretches out her hand to him, but her voice quivers.

These little disappointments are sometimes acute, as a needle, though but a small weapon, can give a sharp prick.

There is nothing further to delay the cloaking and shawling, which forthwith takes place. Paul and Lenore stand together alone for a minute.

They have no longer the same smell," says the girl, eyeing her nosegay with a disenchanted look; "the narcissi's petals are already beginning to yellow and the maiden hair to shrivel. Oh, you bad, bad Paul! just as I began to think that you must really be getting a little fond of me!"

"Don't talk such nonsense," replies Paul, brusquely; "cannot you see with half an eye, that I am in a greater rage with myself than you can possibly be with me? But Lenore" (hesitating a little), "now that you know that I-fool that I was-did not get it for you, are you still going to take it?"

"Of course I am," replies Lenore, decisively, "though it is the bouquet of disappointment it gives a nice finish to one's toilet; if" (with a coquettish pout)" one is not provided with legitimate bouquets one must console oneself with illegitimate ones."

It is an Infirmary Ball; one of those balls, therefore, at which, in theory, gentle and simple meet and frolic with happy equality and unity; at which, in practice, the gentle glide gracefully about at the top of the room, and the simple plunge and caper at the bottom. There is more air, more space, more everything that is desirable, at the lower end near the doors, but to remain at that end is to confess an affinity with the butchers, the bakers, the haberdashers, of the good city of Norley. At the expense of any amount of elbowing, pushing, bruising, one must work one's way up to where one's peers sit enthroned on red-cloth benches. They are rather late. Slowly they work up. Paul escorts Lenore; Scrope, Sylvia; Jemima, herself. A galop is playing, and a hundred, two hundred people, are floundering, flying, and bounding round, as nature and their dancing-master have